The British Carrier Strike Fleet After 1945

By David Hobbs

As a follow-up to the highly regarded British Pacific Fleet, David Hobbs looks at the post-World War II fortunes of the most powerful fleet in the Royal Navy—its decline in the face of diminishing resources, its final fall at the hands of ignorant politicians, and its recent resurrection in the form of the Queen Elizabeth class carriers, the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy. Despite prophecies that nuclear weapons would make conventional forces obsolete, British carrier-borne aircraft were almost continuously employed. The Royal Navy faced new challenges in places like Korea, Egypt, and the Persian Gulf. During these trials the Royal Navy invented techniques and devices crucial to modern carrier operations, pioneering novel forms of warfare tactics for countering insurgency and terrorism. This book combines narratives of poorly understood operations with clear analysis of their strategic and political background. With beautiful illustrations and original research, British Carrier Strike Fleet tells an important but largely untold story of renewed significance as Britain once again embraces carrier operation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612519999

David Hobbs

UK

Book preview

HMS Eagle launching a range...

Copyright © David Hobbs 2015

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Seaforth Publishing,

Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street,

Barnsley S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

Published and distributed in the United States of America and Canada by

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5034

This edition is authorized for sale only in the United States of America, its territories and possessions and Canada.

First Naval Institute Press eBook edition published in 2016.

ISBN 978-1-61251-999-9 (eBook)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of David Hobbs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset and designed by M.A.T.S., Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Glossary

1Manpower, Fleets and Changes

2The Korean War

3Assistance for Commonwealth Navies

4Invention, Innovation, New Aircraft and Rebuilt Ships

5‘Cold War’, NATO and the Middle East

6A Royal Occasion and the Radical Review

7The Suez Crisis

8New Equipment and Another Defence Review

9Helicopters and Helicopter Carriers

10A Range of Carrier Operations

11The Evolution of Strike Warfare

12Brunei and the Indonesian Confrontation

13The British Nuclear Deterrent and the End of the Admiralty Era

14The Cancellation of CVA-01

15Rundown of the Carrier Force

16Capability, the Beira Patrol, Aden and Belize

17Small Carriers and Vertical Landing

18The South Atlantic War

19A Decade of Operations

20New Defence Reviews, Carriers and Aircraft

21Reflections

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

[Sailors have always] learned, in the grimmest schools, precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong. Discipline, courage and contempt for all that is pretentious and insincere are the teaching of the ocean and the elements and they have been qualities, in all ages, of the British sailor.

John Buchan

I do not usually begin my books with a quotation but these words by John Buchan seemed so apt for the opening page of a book about the Royal Navy’s carrier strike fleet after 1945 that I decided to begin it with them. Unlike any other form of warfare that I have been involved with, operating fixed-wing aircraft from a carrier in the open ocean really does ‘endure no makeshifts’ and has to be ‘exactly right’, especially at night or in bad weather. Naval aviation also delivers a whole range of capabilities that have proved to be invaluable in the defence of the United Kingdom and its interests around the world, often when nothing else was available.

In my earlier book about the British Pacific Fleet I explained the great effect that Fleet was to have on the post-war Royal Navy. In this book I take that story forward and give examples of the many operations in which British aircraft carriers have played a critical role and describe the ships and aircraft that achieved so much. In the seventy years since the end of the Second World War the RN and its integral Fleet Air Arm have undergone huge changes and, despite their conspicuous success, aircraft carriers have had to undergo greater scrutiny than any other British weapons system. The Fleet Air Arm has had to fight not only against the nation’s enemies but also against politicians who have often failed to understand what an enormous asset these ships and their aircraft are. The independent Air Force has been principally concerned about preserving its own identity and has often been less helpful than it should have been, despite the Government’s attempts to promote joint activity. In order to show how this see-saw balance developed I have alternated examples of carrier operations with descriptions of a succession of defence reviews with comment on their impact. I have described how technology evolved from the simple Seafire FR 47 operating from the ubiquitous light fleet carriers in 1946 to the technologically complex Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter in 2015 and the Queen Elizabeth class carriers that are to operate them. Carrier strike operations were inevitably compared with the British nuclear deterrent and I have included a chapter on how the deterrent force evolved for comparison.

It is, in part, my story for I served as a fixed and rotary-wing pilot for over thirty years, during which I served in seven aircraft carriers, a number of naval air squadrons and two appointments in the Ministry of Defence. Lest readers should feel that I lack knowledge of the RAF and how it operates when commenting on it, I might also add that I did my advanced flying training in the RAF’s Number 4 Flying Training School, flying Gnats, and completed two exchange appointments, in one of which I flew Hunter FGA 9s and in the other Canberra B 2s and T 17s. I am one of the few pilots to include qualifications on Gannets, RN and RAF Hunter variants, Canberras and Wessex helicopters in their log books and take enormous pride in having carried out over 800 deck landings. After leaving the RN, I served in the Naval Historical Branch for a period and then became the Curator and Deputy Director of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton. In both those appointments I was able to carry out a prodigious amount of detailed research into naval aviation which I have put to good use in this book. I have included the activities of a number of people to create a balance between what happened, why it happened and an informative level of human interest. I am, of course, conscious that for every name mentioned there are literally dozens of others that I have omitted but, at the very least, I hope to have kept the spirit of the Fleet Air Arm in these exciting years alive and brought its magnificent achievements to a wider audience. The Fleet Air Arm has always been a relatively small organisation but mobility gives it the ability to ‘punch above its weight’ and be there when it is needed. I am proud to have been part of its story.

David Hobbs MBE

Commander Royal Navy (Retired)

Crail

February 2015

Acknowledgements

As always I have been helped and supported by my wife Jandy and my son Andrew together with his wife Lucyelle. During a career that lasted more than three decades in the Royal Navy I met a number of clever and inspirational people who broadened my knowledge of RN strike carrier tactics, techniques and operations. It would take too long to name them all and invidious to name only some of them but I thank them all wholeheartedly and those still alive will know who they are. As my focus shifted from current operations and projects to a study of naval history, many people have provided direct or indirect help, some of them in the margins of symposia and conferences around the world. Among them are the late David Brown together with Christopher Page and Stephen Prince, sequentially heads of the Naval Historical Branch, and their colleagues Jennie Wraight the Admiralty librarian, Jock Gardner and Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones. Mike MacAloon has always had the invaluable capacity not only to decide immediately which document would exactly answer a particular question but, more importantly, the knowledge of exactly where to find it within the Branch. The late D K Brown was a valued source of information on design issues that related to carrier performance. Andrew Choong and Jeremy Michel of the Historic Photograph and Ship Plans Department of the National Maritime Museum at the Brass Foundry in Woolwich have also been a considerable source of information and encouragement; I have greatly enjoyed my all-too-brief time with them poring over ships’ plans and drawings. I am also grateful to Graham Edmonds for keeping me up-to-date with what is in newspapers and other publications.

Both in Australia at King-Hall Naval History Conferences and during his visits to the UK, I have received valuable insight about both the RAN and the RN from my friend David Stevens, formerly the Director of Strategic and Historical Studies at the Sea Power Centre – Australia, and much other useful information from Joe Straczek. John Perryman, Senior Historian at the Sea Power Centre, was kind enough to locate several RAN images and to obtain permission for me to use them. Rear Admiral James Goldrick, whose father was a pilot in the RAN, has also contributed through discussions over many years, to my knowledge of the part played by the RAN’s Fleet Air Arm.

From the United States I have learnt a great deal from my friend Norman Friedman, the pre-eminent naval analyst of our generation, and from others with whom I have come into contact including A D Baker III, Edward J Marolda, Thomas Wildenberg and, not least, Tom Momiyama of the Naval Air Systems Command with whom I carried out the AV-8 Harrier trial on the USS Tarawa during 1981. The USNI digital News Daily Update provided important and relevant information.

Michael Whitby, Chief of the Canadian Naval History Team, contributed to my knowledge of the RCN Fleet Air Arm, as did J Allan Snowie from whom I learnt a great deal about aircraft operations from HMCS Magnificent and Bonaventure.

As before, I have found it possible to illustrate the book largely from the photographic collection that I have built up over many years but I am grateful to several people who were kind enough to help fill the gaps. Among these were Steve Bush of Maritime Books who allowed me to use images from the T Ferrers-Walker Collection, and the Crail Museum.

Discussions with Conrad Waters over my contributions to the Seaforth World Naval Review every year have also stimulated my thought processes and been of considerable value, I am grateful for his interest and support.

This publication contains Public Sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v 1.0 in the UK.

I am grateful to Rob Gardiner and Seaforth Publishing for their encouragement and support with this book, as with its predecessors. Our successful partnership has lasted for nearly a decade now and I have already started work on our next book together.

David Hobbs

Glossary

1Manpower, Fleets and Changes

The effective strike operations carried out by the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) in 1945 against Japanese strategic, industrial, military and naval targets drew the Royal Navy into a new era of warfare. It had been the only British strike force capable of attacking mainland Japan and had done so with an economy of manpower and equipment that should have demonstrated to post-war British governments how a maritime strategy could be deployed affordably in the nation’s best interests across the world when required in the uncertain years after 1945. The BPF had also harnessed the potential of the Commonwealth to act together in support of a common aim, besides fighting seamlessly alongside the armed forces of the United States. At the dawn of an era when the United Nations was expected to be the guardian of the world’s peace these were factors as important as the fleet’s effectiveness in combat. The BPF’s embarked aircraft had been the core of the fleet’s power and those who understood its achievements predicted a bright future for naval aviation in the post-war era. After the end of hostilities, the BPF had shown further flexibility by transforming a number of ships, especially aircraft carriers, to repatriate former prisoners of war and internees and to provide humanitarian relief to places such as Hong Kong left destitute by Japanese occupation forces. In the power vacuum after the collapse of Japan the BPF had moved seamlessly into a constabulary role to put down piracy and insurrection across the Far East so that peacetime trade could be restored. The fleet demonstrated its ability to deploy the right amount of force or humanitarian aid in the right place at the right time, often using the same resources for both tasks.

For much of late 1945 and 1946, BPF warships and their ships’ companies proved to be not only the most suitable entity for a wide variety of sensitive and difficult new tasks but, in many cases, they represented the only organisation available in the short term to implement UK government policies that had not been anticipated or prepared for. The former French and Dutch colonial empires in Indo-China and the East Indies had to be held against nationalist insurgents until suitable colonial forces could be shipped to them from Europe where the colonial powers were, themselves, trying to recover from German occupation. The restoration of French and Dutch rule in the region, whilst distasteful to some, was supported by the United Nations in the short term to restore stability and was accepted as British government policy. It was an important aspect of the restoration of global trade and, therefore, vital to the recovery of the United Kingdom’s economy after six years of war. The BPF contributed to the restoration of stability and British trade in a number of ways including the protection of shipping against piracy and the illegal use of force by non-state forces. More subtly it ‘showed the flag’ in many ports to emphasise that Britain was a victorious power with global reach, able to act for good as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

The BPF led the Royal...

The BPF led the Royal Navy into a new era of warfare in which carrier air groups would be used with powerful effect against enemies at sea, in the air and on land, if necessary at considerable distances from the UK. A running range of Corsairs and Avengers is seen here on Victorious, about to take off to strike targets in Japan. RN carrier-borne aircraft like these were the only British aircraft to attack the Japanese mainland during the Second World War. (Author’s collection)

Many urgent operational tasks remained after VJ-Day, among them the clearance of wartime minefields. On the initiative of the Admiralty, an international organisation was created, based in London, to supervise the work of clearance¹ and 1900 minesweepers from many nations were employed on the task. Despite this effort, 130 merchant ships and fishing vessels of all nationalities were sunk or damaged in late 1945 and early 1946, most of them vessels that strayed outside specified channels despite published advice, but no minesweepers were lost. At the beginning of 1946 the Royal Navy operated 513 minesweepers across the world on active duty, all of which had to be manned by skilled personnel available for long enough to avoid constant disruptions to their ships’ companies. By the beginning of 1947 the number had reduced to sixty-five² and over 4600 mines had been swept by British and Commonwealth vessels during 1946³ in areas as far apart as the Atlantic, North Sea, Mediterranean, Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, Indo-China and Borneo.

Powerful strike carrier operations had continued in the BPF until the last hours of the war but the Home Fleet had already run down considerably before the Japanese surrender and the Mediterranean Fleet had effectively become a training force, providing operational sea training facilities in good weather for newly commissioned ships. The end of hostilities and the urgent need for the UK Government to recover an economy that was on the verge of bankruptcy after re-armament and six years of global war meant that the Admiralty had to carry out a programme of demobilisation and force reduction on a massive scale. In 1945 there was already a manpower crisis, with new ships including sixteen of the new light fleet carriers coming into service and older ships including the carriers Furious and Argus and several battleships having to be reduced to reserve to find the experienced men needed to man them. The Admiralty had expected the war in the Pacific to last into 1946 but, under pressure from the Government to make manpower available for the restoration of British industry, had already begun to release men in certain categories back into civilian life. The Japanese surrender in August 1945 meant that large numbers of men would have to be demobilised while maintaining operational capability where it was still needed urgently. The RN in general, and its Fleet Air Arm in particular faced a number of problems once the imperative to mount major combat operations at long range ceased and the Service had to revert to a peacetime size and structure.

Manpower and Training

In mid-1945 approximately 866,000 men and women were serving in the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) but over 75 per cent of the officers were mobilised members of the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and a large percentage of ratings enlisted since 1939 had joined under ‘hostilities only’ rules, although these had allowed for some of them to be retained until ‘normal’ conditions were restored and men on peacetime engagements trained to replace them. This number was far in excess of the Royal Navy’s approved war strength of 450,000 in 1918 and demobilisation had to be carried out, therefore, on a scale and at a pace that was unprecedented. Some organisations could be demobilised quickly as the requirements for them had ended with the enemy’s surrender. These included Western Approaches Command in Liverpool; the wartime Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow; airfields, air yards and stores depots in Ceylon, Australia, the Admiralty Islands and many more. By 1946 the manpower total was reduced to 492,800 and by 1947 it was 192,665.

Demobilisation was not just a question of numbers, although reductions of 300,000 men per year in two consecutive years were difficult enough to manage. The majority of the pre-war regulars still serving had become senior rates or officers and virtually every branch had shortages of junior rates, felt most keenly in the newer branches such as radar, fighter control, electronic warfare and particularly naval aviation. The RN had only regained full control of its embarked aircraft together with their procurement, shore training and support in May 1939, although recruiting for aircrew and maintenance personnel had begun shortly after the decision by Sir Thomas Inskip, the Minister for Defence Co-ordination, in July 1937 that both the administration and operation of naval aviation should be under Admiralty and not joint control. By 1945 one man in four of those serving in the RN and its reserves was directly concerned with naval aviation. The Fleet Air Arm was not, therefore, in a position to allow as many early releases as the larger, longer-established branches such as seamen and stokers. The result was that the release of some rating categories had to be held back behind the average level⁴ and by 1947 the disparity between the most advanced release group and the most retarded was eleven. Equality was not achieved before 1948 when the last of the ‘hostilities only’ ratings were released. The manpower crisis between 1945 and 1948 was one of the reasons why the WRNS was retained as a permanent element within the Naval Service.

A number of regular RN officers had qualified as pilots prior to 1939 and others were recruited as short-service RN pilots and observers after 1937. Many of these subsequently gained permanent commissions and several rose to high rank but after September 1939 the great majority of pilots and observers were commissioned into the RNR and especially the RNVR. While some of these were interested in transferring to the regular Navy, many were not. Faced with a serious shortage of aircrew in 1946, the Admiralty decided to cease the training of observers and train officers as pilot/observers to fill the gap.⁵ Officers undergoing observer training at the time, or ear-marked for it, were to be re-trained as pilot/observers. Surprisingly, it was decided not to repeat the pre-war practice of entering officers on short-service commissions as pilots. At the same time it was decided that two-thirds of all naval pilots should, in future be ratings,⁶ the majority to be recruited direct from civil life into a re-constituted rating pilots’ branch but some to be taken from RN branches particularly, it was hoped, aircraft artificers although it was not made clear how this would help the existing shortage of artificers. The first rating pilot intake took place in November 1946 and comprised volunteers from the residue of deferred wartime ‘Y’ Scheme candidates together with a few transfers from other branches. Another new rating branch was created to replace the wartime telegraphist air gunners (TAGs); known as aircrewmen, the new rear-seat crews were to specialise as ‘maintainer-users’ of airborne electronic equipment and were to be recruited, it was hoped, mainly from the electrical branch. Aircrewmen in the higher rating grades were to be trained to navigate aircraft and suitable TAGs were to be offered conversion courses to allow them to join the branch which was expected to fill about 80 per cent of the rear seats in future squadrons.

Changes were also made in the maintenance and servicing branches and those connected with other duties concerning aircraft. The naval airman branch was reconstituted and ratings employed in both aircraft handling and safety equipment duties were transferred into it from the seaman branch. The branch also included photographers, meteorological ratings and mechanics used for aircraft servicing and general duties connected with air ordnance. More highly-qualified mechanics, now known as skilled air mechanics (SAMs), were to be introduced to replace the air fitter branch for employment on aircraft maintenance that required a lower degree of skill than that of artificers.⁷ Artificers themselves were the most highly-skilled rating maintenance personnel and they were qualified in either airframe/engine or electrical/ordnance categories. In accordance with the recommendations of the Naval Aircraft Maintenance Committee, centralised maintenance was introduced for both front-line and training units within which personnel and aircraft were to be formed into cohesive air groups.

Within a year it had to be accepted the changes introduced for aircrew categories and their training had been a failure that had, arguably, made the situation worse rather than better. Few volunteers for the rating pilot scheme had come forward and the Admiralty had to accept that only officers would have the full range of qualities and access to briefing material and intelligence that it required its pilots to have.⁸ This accorded with wartime experience, making the decision to rely heavily on rating pilots difficult to understand. Also, the RAF, which was responsible for all UK military pilot training, had decided that its own pilots should all, in future, be officers and training ratings for the RN alone would have been difficult. The termination of the rating pilot scheme was announced in December 1948⁹ and it was announced at the same time that in future pilot entry was to comprise approximately one-third from volunteer executive officers on the permanent list and two-thirds direct entry officers on short-service commissions. A small number of Royal Marines and engineer specialist officers were also to be recruited to provide a broad base of knowledge in front-line units.

The first conversion course to train pilot/observers started in July 1948 but it immediately became apparent that the concept of appointing dual-trained officers as either pilots or observers was impractical and very uneconomical since the training was excessively long and the maintenance of currency in both skills difficult to achieve. The few dual-trained officers were designated as (F) for ‘flying’ rather than the more usual (p) for a pilot or (o) for an observer in the Navy List. The last pure observer courses in 1946 were composed of RCN and Dutch officers but by 1948 it was accepted that a new scheme for the direct entry of short-service officers for training as observers must be restored. The aircrewman branch took a long time to get started but eventually attracted a number of TAGs; all TAGs rated petty officer or above were offered the choice of conversion to the aircrewman branch or of re-training as naval airmen or air electrical specialists. About 150 opted to continue flying and completed their training in November 1949. The original concept that the branch should draw its recruits from the air electrical branch was abandoned after it proved impractical and a direct-entry scheme was approved. This, likewise, never materialised and by 1949 the branch was composed entirely of former TAGs. A new entry of some form of rating aircrew was anticipated, however, for the three-seat anti-submarine aircraft project that materialised as the Fairey Gannet. Broadly, the changes in the structure of the maintenance branches proved more workable and these stayed in place. One other change was introduced in 1949; since May 1939 officers involved with aviation duties had formed what was known as the Air Branch, although the term Fleet Air Arm used since 1924 had remained in common use. Short-service officers and those mobilised from the RNR and RNVR into the Air Branch, who had not qualified as executive officers able to keep watches or command HM ships had the fact denoted by a letter ‘A’ inside the executive curl of the their rank lace. In 1949 the Branch was disestablished and officers were transferred into the executive or engineering Branches¹⁰ as appropriate and the use of the ‘A’ in rank lace lapsed.

The last course of pilots cross-trained as observers completed its training in September 1949 and there were no plans to train more although, in the normal course of events, it remained possible for some suitable observers to re-train as pilots. At the same time specialisation as observers was re-opened to officers in the executive branch and direct-entry into observer training continued. By 1949 the training of aircrew had, therefore, stabilised although numbers were still significantly below those required. Two very practical schemes were introduced to expand the number of aircrew available at short notice in emergencies, however. The first of these was the establishment of four RNVR naval air squadrons, three fighter and one anti-submarine, in July 1947. These were based at RN air stations and had a core of regular pilots and maintainers. Initially sixty-five pilots and six observers, all officers, were enrolled,¹¹ thus ensuring that their extensive wartime experience continued to be available. The Admiralty also sought to recruit experienced RNVR air engineer officers, supply officers and air traffic control specialists together with an initial ninety ratings with aircraft servicing and maintenance experience to make the RNVR air squadrons fully capable of embarkation at need. They had to commit to carrying out fourteen days’ continuous training per year in addition to 100 hours non-continuous training spread over at least twelve weekends per year. In practice it was found that commitment was needed to two or three weekends per month for the pilots to maintain reasonable currency on their aircraft. RNVR aircrew with a wartime background were obviously a wasting asset as they grew older, however, and the second scheme involved the training of new reserve aircrew. In 1949 it was decided to introduce pilot training, and in due course observer training, for National Servicemen deemed to be suitable for a commission.¹² They were entered as Midshipmen RNVR and followed the normal RN flying training syllabus to ‘wings’ standard during their National Service time. They were then to be fed into the RNVR air squadrons for conversion onto operational types and continuation flying, meeting the normal requirements for training. Both reserve schemes provided a valuable means by which the front-line naval air squadrons could be reinforced in an emergency and both were to be tested sooner than had been envisaged.

As a means of making the most use of the manpower that was available, another 1949 decision led to the civilianisation of several tasks previously undertaken within the Home Air Command training establishment. The main object of this was to enable the release of large numbers of maintenance personnel and a proportion of aircrew for duties more closely connected to front-line operations.¹³ These included the twin-engined aircraft conversion unit and the provision of targets for the aircraft direction school taken over by Airwork Services at RNAS Brawdy, flying in support of the naval air signal school by Air Service Training at Hamble and the provision of an instrument flying school and practice flying facilities for pilots in Admiralty appointments by Short Brothers & Harland at Rochester. Introduced for an initial trial period until 1950, civilianisation worked well and other tasks were considered.

Ships

In 1945 all six operational fleet carriers had served in the 1st Aircraft Carrier Squadron (ACS) as part of the BPF. By 1947 all of them had returned to the UK, some having been used for trooping duties to the Far East before being reduced to reserve status. Illustrious was modernised and re-commissioned but with accommodation that was far below acceptable peacetime standards she was used with a reduced ship’s company as a trials and training carrier. Even then it proved impossible to keep her running during the manpower crises during demobilisation and she spent periods in reserve. It had to be accepted between 1945 and 1948 that these big ships were manpower-intensive and expensive to operate. Implacable and Indomitable underwent refits to allow them to return to operational service but their low hangar heights and small lifts limited the type of aircraft they could operate. Indefatigable and Victorious were brought out of reserve for service with reduced ships’ companies to act as training ships in the Home Fleet Training Squadron based at Portland, replacing battleships that were placed in reserve or scrapped. Formidable was found to be in such a poor material state after her wartime damage and the years laid up without maintenance that she was never returned to service.

Although they were relatively young, these six ships suffered from the fact that they had been designed before the 1942 Joint Technical Committee decision that aircraft must be embarked in greater numbers with larger dimensions than had previously been allowed and maximum launch weights up to 30,000lbs. None of the existing fleet carriers were capable of operating such aircraft without major reconstruction and their accommodation, designed in the late 1930s was totally inadequate for the increased number of sailors required for their enlarged air groups, radar and other technical advances including the big increases in the size of their close-range armament. In mid-1945 the Admiralty had authority from the Government to build seven new fleet carriers, three of the Audacious class and four of the later and bigger Malta class. The latter could never have been completed during the war and were designed with the post-war fleet in mind but with the nation on the verge of bankruptcy, the Admiralty was unable to persuade the new Labour Government that it needed at least two Malta class and they were all cancelled by December before construction had begun. One of the Audacious class was scrapped on the slipway when 27 per cent complete. The two others were eventually completed as Eagle and Ark Royal, both modified to operate new generations of aircraft and both had a major role to play in the RN strike fleet for two decades.

The light fleet carriers proved to be valuable ships in the immediate post-war years. Four of them, Colossus, Venerable, Vengeance and Glory, had joined the BPF in 1945 just too late for active operations against the Japanese but in time to play an important role in the stabilisation of the Far East when limited force had to be applied in several local conflicts that followed the removal of Japanese occupation forces. By the end of 1946 only two light fleet carriers remained with the BPF and they returned to the UK to be reduced to reserve in 1947 as the manpower crisis reached its height. Other ships of this class were completed after 1945 and were brought into service when manpower and worked-up squadrons were available. None of the improved Majestic class were completed for the RN but Magnificent was completed for loan to the RCN and Terrible was sold to the RAN as HMAS Sydney III. Both navies adopted RN squadron numbers and procedures for their embryonic Fleet Air Arms and the provision of manpower to fill gaps in their establishments and training their air groups absorbed a significant amount of RN effort. 1948 found nearly all RN carriers immobilised in UK ports because of manpower shortages,¹⁴ but by the end of the year the position had improved and it proved possible to re-commission one fleet and four light fleet carriers for operational service with full air groups with one fleet and one light fleet carrier engaged in trials and training duties.

During the Second World War the RN had operated thirty-eight escort carriers built in the USA and made available under Lend-Lease arrangements; a further six were converted from merchant ships in the UK together with nineteen small Merchant Navy-manned escort carriers known as MAC-Ships. By 1947 the surviving American ships had all been returned, the MAC-Ships returned to mercantile use and all but one of the British conversions returned to their former owners. The exception was Campania which was to be converted into an aircraft ferry but that plan failed to materialise and she was converted into an exhibition ship to support the Festival of Britain in 1951. Her naval career subsequently resumed and in 1952 she was refitted to become the flagship of the task force that carried out the first British atomic bomb test at Monte Bello Island off north-west Australia. She operated helicopters and seaplanes on a variety of administrative tasks. Three maintenance carriers, a type unique to the RN, were reduced to reserve by 1946 but Unicorn was subsequently to give valuable service during the Korean War and Perseus as a trials ship and prototype helicopter carrier.

Beyond the short term, once manpower stability had been achieved, the Admiralty still faced major problems. To keep the RN effective, a new generation of aircraft would have to be introduced but the existing large carriers were clearly handicapped by their low hangar height, small lifts and cramped workshops and accommodation. They would need radical reconstruction to make them effective and that would be expensive; just how expensive was not appreciated until work started on the first ship, Victorious in 1950. Reconstruction on this scale had never been attempted in a Royal Dockyard before but in 1949 Admiralty approval in principle, with Treasury acceptance, was given to modernise three of the existing fleet carriers.¹⁵ The flight deck and hangars were to be strengthened to operate aircraft at maximum weights up to 30,000lbs. The hangars were to retain their armoured protection but their height was to be increased to 17ft 6in and a complete gallery deck was to be built in over the hangars, beneath their flight decks. The ships were to be fitted with new, larger lifts including a side-lift, together with steam catapults, improved arrester gear and barriers. Even in 1949, however, it was admitted that ‘owing to the small size of these ships, the full possibilities which should result from fitting all the latest aircraft operating equipment will not be attainable’.¹⁶ There was no immediate intention of modernising any light fleet carriers despite their current usefulness.

Aircraft

In many ways the Royal Navy’s problems with aircraft mirrored those with its ships; it had a lot of them in 1945, some of which remained in production but new technological developments and the requirement for long-range strike warfare meant that most of these were already obsolescent. A considerable number, roughly half the total, had been provided by the United States under Lend-Lease arrangements and after the end of hostilities these had to be paid for in dollars, returned to the USA or destroyed. Unsurprisingly the last option was the cheapest and thousands of aircraft were dumped into the sea off Australia, India, Ceylon, South Africa and in the waters around the United Kingdom. To add to the problem, the British aircraft industry was going through its own post-war convulsions with the shutting-down of the shadow factory scheme and the financial difficulties that followed the cancellation of large numbers of aircraft under contract.

Two aircraft types were under development for the RN in 1945 which were intended specifically for use in the Malta, Audacious and Hermes class carriers. Both were too big and heavy to operate from the existing fleet or light fleet carriers and with the cancellation of the Maltas and likely long delays before the ships that became Eagle and Ark Royal and the four remaining Hermes class ships would be completed there seemed little point in continuing with aircraft which were expected to be obsolete before they could go to sea and both were cancelled. The first was the Fairey Spearfish, intended as a Barracuda replacement in the strike and reconnaissance roles, ordered to meet Specification O.5/43.¹⁷ Unlike its predecessor, dive-bombing was considered the primary attack method with torpedo attack relegated to secondary status. The first prototype, RA 356, flew in 1946 and it was followed by two other prototypes which were used for development work until 1952 but production orders for 208 Spearfish were cancelled and the airframes broken up on Fairey’s Stockport production line.¹⁸ It had a wingspan of 60ft 3in and a maximum launch weight of 22,083lbs, making it considerably larger and heavier than its predecessor, and had a large internal weapons bay capable of carrying a single Mark 15 or 17 torpedo or up to four 1000lb bombs. Defensive armament comprised a single 0.5in Browning machine in a turret aft of the cockpit that was controlled remotely by the observer. Another advanced feature was the torpedo and sight which included an early example of an analogue computer. It would have had a radius of action of about 400 miles. The prototypes and the first 100 production aircraft were powered by a single 2320hp Bristol Centaurus 58 radial engine; subsequent production aircraft were to have been fitted with the projected Rolls-Royce Pennine engine which was to be more powerful.¹⁹ The Spearfish was one of the largest single-engined aircraft ever flown.

The other cancelled project was the Short Sturgeon which was designed to meet Specification S.11/43 for a long-range reconnaissance and light strike aircraft. Like the Spearfish, it was specified after the Joint Technical Committee’s decision to increase the size and weight of aircraft and intended for the new generation of carriers. The only twin propeller-driven aircraft to be designed for the Royal Navy from the outset rather than evolved from a design intended for the RAF, it was too big and too heavy for operation from the existing carriers. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin 140 engines, each developing 2080hp, it had a wingspan of 59ft 11in and a maximum all-up weight of 23,000lbs.²⁰ A small internal bomb-bay was capable of carrying a single 1000lb bomb or four depth charges; it was also intended to have two 0.5in Browning ‘front-guns’ fitted in the wings and hardpoints under the wings for sixteen 3in rockets with 60lb warheads. These gave it a useful attack capability but its principal role equipment would have been two F-52 cameras with 36in or 20in lenses which would have given the aircraft a strategic reconnaissance capability. It would also have carried ASH radar in the nose and was capable of both radar and visual surface search and shadowing an enemy force at sea. The radius of action on internal fuel would have been an impressive 700 miles in still air and maximum speed was 325 knots. Like all twin-engined propeller-driven naval aircraft, the Sturgeon suffered from an asymmetric problem if a single engine failed on the approach to a carrier. Shorts tackled this by fitting the two engines with contra-rotating propellers which solved the problem of yaw on take-off but successful deck landing with asymmetric thrust after a single engine failure would still have been marginal because of the ‘good’ engine being necessarily offset from the aircraft’s centreline to give space for the propeller’s rotation. A single prototype of this variant, RK 787, flew in 1946.

The Sturgeon T 2 was...

The Sturgeon T 2 was an unusual target facilities aircraft in that it was fully equipped for deck landing. This aircraft of 728 NAS at RNAS Hal Far is about to be given the ‘cut’ by the batsman as it lands on a light fleet carrier of the Mediterranean Fleet.

In August 1945 a contract had been placed for thirty Sturgeon S1 aircraft and, rather than cancel them, the Admiralty tasked Shorts to modify them into high-speed target-towing aircraft to meet specification Q.1/46 and two further prototypes were built, VR 363 and VR 371. These retained the ability to operate from a carrier with tail hooks and power-folding wings but had a lengthened nose with extensive glazing to house cameras. It is a measure of the importance placed on realistic weapons training required after 1945 that twenty-three aircraft from the original production order were completed as target-tugs to this modified TT 2 standard for service with RN fleet requirements units in the UK and Malta. Of these, nineteen aircraft were further modified in the mid-1950s to TT 3 standard with the deck landing and photographic equipment removed together with a reversion to the original nose design. They remained in service until replaced by Meteor TT 20 jets in 1958.

Another aircraft that saw limited production in the years immediately after the Second World War was the Blackburn Firebrand, originally conceived to meet specification N.11/40 for a fleet air-defence fighter. Large, robust and never to prove popular with its pilots, the Firebrand’s first prototype, DD 804, first flew in February 1942 by which time the Seafire appeared to fill the role adequately and it was decided to modify the Firebrand into a long-range torpedo-carrying strike fighter. Further development spanned the remaining war years and the first production version, the TF 4, only entered service with 813 NAS in September 1945. It took part in the victory flypast over London in June 1946. A total of 220 aircraft were produced, mostly to TF 4 standard but a small batch was built to the definitive TF 5 standard. A number of TF 4s were upgraded to TF 5 standard.

A Firebrand of 813 NAS...

A Firebrand of 813 NAS armed with a Mark 17 torpedo taking off from Indomitable. The aircraft parked aft are Sea Furies and Firebrands. (Author’s collection)

The Firebrand²¹ had a maximum all-up weight of 17,500lbs and a wingspan of just over 51ft which meant that it could only be operated from Implacable, Indefatigable, Eagle and the modernised Indomitable. By 1946 it lacked the essential performance needed from a fighter but with no strike aircraft other than the obsolescent Barracuda capable of carrying a torpedo it had a limited usefulness and equipped two front-line units, 813 and 827 NAS. It was expected that both would re-equip with the new turbo-prop Westland Wyvern in 1948 but development difficulties delayed their replacement until 1953. The Firebrand TF 5 had a 2520hp Bristol Centaurus 9 engine giving a maximum speed of 380 knots. It had four 20mm cannon, each with 200 rounds per gun, in the wings and a single 1850lb Mark 15 or 17 torpedo on a hardpoint on the fuselage centreline which could be fitted with alternative loads of a single 2000lb, 1000lb, 500lb bomb, Mark 6, 7 or 9 mine or 100-gallon fuel tank. Hardpoints under each wing could be fitted with 500lb or 250lb bombs or depth charges, 50-gallon tanks or eight 3in rockets with 60lb heads. Radius of action with internal fuel was about 250nm; this could be extended with external tanks but the aircraft’s handling qualities would have been marginal with a heavy load. In any event it was a cumbersome aircraft to fly to the deck and was considered obsolete by 1950.

A specialised variant of the Mosquito fighter/bomber, known as the Sea Mosquito, had been developed after Lieutenant Commander E M ‘Winkle’ Brown landed a modified Mosquito on Indefatigable on 25 March 1944; the world’s first carrier landing by a twin-engined aircraft.²² Designed to meet specification N.15/44, the RN variant was designated the Sea Mosquito TR 33 and a contract for three prototype examples was followed by another for 100 production aircraft, the first of which was delivered in late 1945. 811 NAS re-formed with former RAF Mosquito FB 6 aircraft to convert aircrew onto the new type at the end of 1945 and re-equipped with Sea Mosquitoes in April 1946. By then, there was literally no deck from which the type could operate at its maximum all-up weight of 22,500lbs with a torpedo and full fuel although its wingspan of 54ft was acceptable. It could have operated at reduced weight from Indefatigable or Implacable but there were concerns about its marginal single-engine deck landing performance and, while these might have been acceptable in wartime, they were not in peacetime. 811 NAS operated ashore at RN Air Stations Ford, Brawdy and Eglinton before disbanding in July 1947.²³ The production Sea Mosquitoes were subsequently used by second-line squadrons until the mid-1950s, together with a small batch of improved TR 37 versions.

A Sea Hornet NF 21 seconds...

A Sea Hornet NF 21 seconds before catching number 2 wire on its parent carrier. The batsman has his bats lowered in the ‘cut’ position and is continuing to watch the aircraft’s arrival from his position aft of his wind-break. (Author’s collection)

The Mosquito’s designers, de Havilland, had also produced a later twin-engined design from 1943 which was wisely produced in both land and carrier-based versions as a single-seat strike fighter. Both had two Merlin engines of 2030hp with propellers that rotated in opposite directions so that there was no yaw on take-off but the problem of asymmetric recovery after a single engine failure remained.²⁴ The naval version was modified to meet specification N.5/44 from the basic design by Heston Aircraft and the first prototype, PX 212, flew for the first time in April 1945 with deck-landing trials on the new light fleet carrier Ocean following in August. The naval variant was given the name Sea Hornet and the RN eventually procured three versions; the F 20 long-range strike-fighter, the NF 21 night fighter and the PR 22 reconnaissance aircraft. The NF 21 was the heaviest version, equipped with ASH radar and a second crew member to operate it. It had a maximum all-up weight of 19,530lbs and, like all versions, a wingspan of 45ft which meant that it could be operated from Indefatigable, Implacable, the modernised Indomitable, Eagle and even, in limited numbers, from a modernised light fleet carrier. With a maximum speed of 406 knots the Sea Hornet F 20 was the fastest piston-engined fighter ever to serve with the RN and it had a radius of action of 600nm with internal fuel which could be extended to 800nm with drop tanks fitted under the wings. The F 20 and NF 21 had four 20mm cannon in the nose with 180 rounds per gun²⁵ and both versions had wing hardpoints, each capable of carrying a single drop tank, 1000lb bomb or mine. Alternatively, rails for up to eight 3in rockets with 60lb warheads could be fitted under the wings. Surprisingly, the addition of radar and the extra crew member in the NF 21 only reduced its maximum speed by 4 knots. The PR 22 was a strategic reconnaissance version which lacked the guns but could still be fitted with underwing drop tanks. It was fitted with two F52 vertically-mounted cameras for day reconnaissance or a single K19B for night work.²⁶ Later F 20s were fitted to take oblique photographs from cameras fitted in the rear fuselage and designated FR 20s. Only one front-line unit embarked with Sea Hornet F 20s and PR 22s, 801 NAS, which re-commissioned with the types on 1 June 1947 although 806 NAS was partially equipped with Sea Hornets together with Sea Vampire jets and Sea Furies for a demonstration tour of the USA in 1948. Although it had a greater radius of action than any other fighter, the F 20 was withdrawn from front-line service in 1951 so that the fighter force could be standardised on a single type, the Sea Fury. The PR 22 was withdrawn at the same time although both variants continued to serve with second-line units until 1957. The NF 21 equipped 809 NAS on 20 January 1949 and continued in service until 1954 when it was replaced by Sea Venom jets. A total of 178 Sea Hornets was built, comprising seventy-seven F 20s, seventy-eight NF 21s and twenty-three PR 22s.²⁷

The other new type was the Hawker Sea Fury which flew for the first time in February 1945 and carried out deck landing trials on Victorious during 1946. Development then proceeded at a slow pace because of the run-down of Hawker’s production facilities after 1946 and the RN’s large stock of legacy Seafire fighters which did not need immediate replacement. The first version was the F 10,²⁸ intended for use as an interceptor fighter for fleet air-defence duties, and it equipped 807 NAS at RNAS Eglinton in August 1947.²⁹ Development work continued, however, towards what would become the outstanding piston-engined fighter of its generation, the Sea Fury FB 11. This had a 2480hp Bristol Centaurus engine driving a five-bladed propeller. The four 20mm cannon fitted in the wings had 580 rounds per gun, making the Sea Fury a persistent ground-attack aircraft as well as an effective fighter for the period and hardpoints under each wing were capable of carrying a single 1000lb or 500lb bomb, or 90- or 45-gallon drop tanks in addition to a maximum of twelve 3in rockets with 60lb warheads on underwing rails.³⁰ With a maximum all-up weight of 14,555lbs and a wingspan of only 38ft 4in spread, the Sea Fury could operate from any British carrier and its usefulness as a strike fighter operating from the light fleet carriers that formed the backbone of the RN and Commonwealth carrier strike forces by 1950 was obvious. It had a radius of action of 300nm on internal fuel which could be doubled if 90-gallon tanks were fitted, although they limited its manoeuvrability as a fighter. The first FB 11-equipped unit, 802 NAS, re-commissioned at RNAS Eglinton in May 1948 and the type eventually replaced the Seafire and equipped eight front-line fighter squadrons in the RN plus another eight RNVR fighter squadrons and twelve second-line units. Logically the Commonwealth navies that bought light fleet carriers bought Sea Furies to operate from them and squadrons were formed by the RAN and RCN. The Dutch Navy also operated the type from its light fleet carrier and land-based versions were exported to Burma, Cuba and Germany. Eventually 665 Sea Furies were built for the RN with the last batch of thirty ordered in October 1951. The early jet fighters were only marginally faster than the Sea Fury and were unable to out-turn it, so it remained a viable fighter into the mid-1950s and was not finally withdrawn until 1957.

Although the majority of American types were destroyed soon after VJ-Day, several squadrons retained them for a short period. The four light fleet carriers serving with the BPF in 1945 retained their Corsair squadrons because there was no viable replacement until stocks of the Seafire F 15 arrived in the Far East. The last Corsair unit, 1851 NAS, was not disbanded until August 1946. Sufficient Hellcat NF 2 night fighters, the equivalent of the USN F6F-5N, were retained to re-commission 892 NAS as a night fighter unit in April 1945 for service in the night carrier Ocean which was originally intended to join the BPF. Another night fighter unit, 1792 NAS equipped with Firefly NF 1s, joined Ocean in late 1945 and in

Reviews for The British Carrier Strike Fleet After 1945

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When it comes to aviation and the Royal Navy it seems safe to say that if David Hobbs doesn't know it then it's probably not important. However, it also means that this tome often has some of the flavor of official history and feels more like a reference book than a narrative history. Anyway, the real core of this work is the "CVA-1" debacle of the 1960s which almost drove the RN out of the carrier business, even though there was a continuing need for to provide air support for the British expeditionary mission. Hobbs observes that there was something of a perfect storm situation between how the RN wasn't managing its resources very well, the RAF was traumatized by the loss of the main nuclear deterrent mission to the RN and apparently determined to sabotage the project (to save its own nuclear-armed bomber force) and an economic situation that was bad and couldn't be ignored by Britain's political leadership. Whatever the issues with the new British fleet carriers and their air groups Hobbs observes that they represent a capability that never should have been lost in the first place so long as London has a serious interest in force projection.

[charlesferdinand_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very exhaustive history of British carrier operations after WW II, both with the well know highlights (Korea, Suez, Falklands) and with lesser known operations in the Middle East or Asian waters. The various aircraft programmes are also discussed.Just two small quibbles: a systematic overview of which carriers were in service and their general characteristics would have been practical. Secondly, the style is textbook-dry.